So there are a lot of things wrong here. My lighting set up at the moment is an an hdri with final gathering for the heavy lifting and a couple of directional lights for shadows. Most of my problems are coming from a poor quality HDRI, but I am hoping to compensate with software lights for this one.

-Add a touch of blue to the shadows.
-Add some light fall off to the under-side of the disk part of the walker instead of solid black. More bounced light in there. (Need some ideas on how to do this in MR.)
-The shadow under the foot looks off.
-The feet and the top of the disk are a bit hot so I should probably lower the overall intensity.

My main concern is getting the bounced light on the underside. Do I need something like GI or maybe adjust it with some additional lights and a good AO pass?

Another question I have had for a while...From my understanding FG does an AO calculation. Is this true? Is it better to do a pass with an AO shader?

As far as materials go, there is not much I can do at the moment. I am working with a video game model with a solid lambert material. I would like to fix the materials in the future, but I need to nail the lighting first.

I am using a useBackground shader on a sphere so that it will catch the shadows that are cast on the igloo doghouse. The shadow results are great, but it shades the background image plane where the sphere is. Will I have a problem with this when I throw my passes in a compositer? Is there a way to fix it in Maya? Is there a better way to approach it?

Thanks in advance!

phix314

06 June 2009, 08:54 AM

The FG on the background shader isn't helping. The really soft shadowing around the foot isn't natural. Definitely crank the bounce light underneath the mech.

Mr. D

06 June 2009, 11:38 PM

Hello

recheck your shadow casting lights position. note shadow cast from background objects, the alcove's shadowing and the shadows from the 2 exterior flood lights.
all tend to point straighter down, while yours comes in from the right side more.

Mr. D

B4C

06 June 2009, 04:50 AM

Hello

recheck your shadow casting lights position. note shadow cast from background objects, the alcove's shadowing and the shadows from the 2 exterior flood lights.
all tend to point straighter down, while yours comes in from the right side more.

Mr. D

Ah, you're right. I don't know how I missed that. Thank you.

bonestructure

06 June 2009, 02:25 PM

"Add a touch of blue to the shadows"

In traditional art, rather than blue, one normally adds a bit of purple to the shadows. I tend to follow that tradition. For some reason I don't understand, really, it seems to make shadows more accurate.

israelyang

06 June 2009, 07:01 PM

the tinting of the shadow comes from the sky, if the sky is gray then the shadow wouldn't be tinted blue. Use the sky color as your reference to how the shadow should look like.
A shadow might appear more purple during magic hours but then it'd be most likely darker and harder to tell because the sky light is less strong.

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